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Grandmother

Alan Catlin

The old lady across the street watches
neighbors with late husband’s field glasses
propped on a swiveling stand. Glasses so heavy
she can’t hold them herself, but are as accurate
as an infantry field officer needed them to be
in the last great war. She is wizened, shrunken,
has eyes like that owl in Twin Peaks in the woods,
who is presumed to be observing everything.
Whose call in the night is meant to signify,
in a cliché cinematic way, something is about
to happen, or has happened, that will greatly
change major plot lines in the show or on
the street. This owl is not quite like the symbol
of spiritual significance for native peoples
as the poetry collection, When the Owl Cries
Indians Dies does, suggestive of a journey
into other worlds, on scared grounds,
far removed from a small urban street divided
into blocks that are actually territories
for rival drug lords, meeting in the middle
to construct makeshift memorials for foot
soldiers killed in the line of duty.
She’s seen it all, this forward point observer,
may not be the wise old granny of fairy
tales and myths, may not even by owl like
in her imparting of knowledge, but she sure
can deliver a witness identification profile,
and save authorities time, manpower, and effort
as the go-to-person for street crimes and
general on-the-hot-spot information.
On the street they added her to the time-honored
statements of Inevitability which now reads:
death, taxes and grandma.

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